Illusion Report

Among all of humanity, only one percent are born with a Path.

And of that one percent, only those living in metropolises with populations over ten million have a chance of opening their Path.

Of those who, by a stroke of luck, meet the conditions, open a Path, enter a Nest, and manage to come back alive, not even one in ten survives.

Calculated by these odds, Daiju Monroe’s death was an inevitability born from chance.

From the moment of the car crash, Daiju Monroe’s fate was pierced through with irony. But the greatest irony was that only through her death could her son obtain a life he never could have achieved, no matter how hard he worked.

"...I was a step too late. By then, she had long stopped breathing. After I finally managed to cut the resident’s rope and force it to retreat from the mortal world, I thought you were dead too. For at least half an hour, you lay motionless on the road, not far from her, your eyes meeting hers. What were you thinking then?"

Chaisi followed the sound, one step at a time.

Sometimes the voice drifted too far, its edges blurring, and he would walk in the wrong direction. But Uncle Kai’s narration never stopped; it would always sound again from behind, prompting him to turn around.

In the darkness, the dissociated, scattered parts of his memory were like fish responding to a summons, gently swimming back to his side to brush against him. Chaisi cupped his hands, holding the sand-like pieces of himself together, as he answered Uncle Kai again and again in a hoarse voice.

"I... I wasn’t thinking about anything back then."

He said in a low voice, "I believed that if I didn’t cry, didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t do anything, the world would just stay frozen in that moment. That’s what my five-year-old self believed. As long as the world stopped, Mom would stay there forever. Just like before. Nothing would change."

By worldly standards, Daiju Monroe might not have been a very competent mother. She rarely cooked for her child, was always working, and certainly wasn’t focused on his preschool intellectual development.

Chaisi couldn’t imagine a better mother. It was true when he was five, and it was still true now.

"After the funeral, your aunt was hesitant. She didn’t know whether to leave you to the local welfare system or to adopt you and bring you to Blackmoor City. She was getting old and wasn’t well-off; raising a strange child from scratch was truly too much for her. At the time, I hadn’t yet considered adopting you myself. I just told her that if she brought you to Blackmoor City, I could perhaps pull some strings to find a good family for you, rather than have you wait for a lottery draw in an orphanage or be passed from one foster home to another."

Perhaps this part of his memory hadn’t returned yet, or perhaps Uncle Kai had never told him. For Chaisi, this was the first time he was hearing the story of how he had left Luocheng.

"Do you remember? When you first arrived in Blackmoor City, you stayed at your aunt’s place."

Standing in the darkness, Chaisi thought for a moment and felt another small fragment swim gently toward him from the deep gloom.

The moment it touched him, his aunt’s old apartment appeared before his eyes once more. The apartment had an indescribable, heavy, old-person smell, and the lightbulbs always seemed to be gasping for breath, never shining brightly enough. He would sit blankly in front of the television, staying there all day.

Even a memory like this, Chaisi cherished and held close.

"...When your Aunt Hai heard about your situation, she couldn’t bear it. It was Thanksgiving, so she asked me to invite your aunt to bring you over for dinner. She prepared a gift for you, remember? A model rocket kit."

A smile surfaced on Chaisi’s face, then faded.

"I remember," he responded. "I remember now... Damian and I put it together."

Back then, Aunt Hai—who had not yet lost her own child—had a smile that shone brightly. She praised Chaisi for being handsome and having a large vocabulary, remarking that for a five-year-old to know so many words and read storybooks on his own was impressive.

The way Aunt Hai looked at Chaisi back then was how a prosperous, contented adult would look at an unfortunate, unfamiliar child: with kindness, tolerance, generosity... and brevity.

After all, he was just a strange child whose life was not expected to intersect with hers for long.

Suspicion, doubt, and fear would color her gaze much later.

...A player in the Nest Dominance Game. The Child of the Cuckoo. Chaisi Monroe.

This memory fragment returned abruptly, making him tremble slightly.

’I don’t like it, but it’s my memory too.’

"...Damian really liked you."

’Did Uncle Kai’s voice tremble?’

As he was being tossed about by the waves of darkness, Chaisi probably wouldn’t have been able to detect even a faint, distant tremor in the voice.

"He always wanted an older brother. Even though you’re only a year older, you were much more composed than him. Disaster has a way of pushing a child toward maturity and an adult toward old age. He insisted on opening your gift and playing with you, and you weren’t annoyed at all. You let him open it and had a great time playing with him."

’How could I have had the right to refuse?’

Uncle Kai shouldn’t be able to hear him.

Chaisi whispered to the darkness, "That night, the dinner I ate, the scent of the candles I smelled, the care I received, the gift I was given... and my very life, were all bestowed upon me by his father. I knew even then that Damian and I were different. I had no right to refuse him."

"From the moment you two first met, you were as close as blood brothers."

"...I think Damian also knew I had no right to refuse him. But he didn’t often use that to force my hand..."

"Your aunt said that ever since you left home, you hadn’t played with any children your age. Your Aunt Hai immediately said that you could come over to play with Damian anytime you wanted..."

’Letting the wolf into the house.’

Many years later, one night, Chaisi stood in a dim hallway, with only a thin line of light seeping from under a door ahead. The door was shut tight, and only occasionally did raised snippets of their argument leak out.

"...Tell the truth! I don’t believe you, I’m not a fool... Did I really... let the wolf into the house back then?"

Chaisi slowly bent down, his knees hitting the floor. He crouched, half-squatting and half-kneeling, shrinking into a dark corner of the hallway—oh, no. ’That’s not right. I’m an adult now. I’m trapped in the Black Abyss Belt.’

Uncle Kai’s narrating voice was like a rope thrown to him, pulling him bit by bit out of the Black Abyss Belt... just like that resident who had entered the mortal world using a rope all those years ago.

When fate turned its wheels, it paid no mind to its own sharp edges.

"I had just bought the house back then, quite a distance from downtown Blackmoor City. You and Damian played for a long time, so Helen suggested your aunt stay the night and leave the next day. It was that very night that you found me in the study."

Chaisi listened quietly, waiting for that memory to be summoned back.

’...That’s right, how does Uncle Kai know that narration can help me find my scattered fragments?’

Even he himself had only just recently discovered that he could recall the fragments by thinking about them repeatedly.

’Uncle Kai knows I’m in the Black Abyss Belt, on the verge of dissolving...’

’But how does he know?’

"You were like a little adult back then, climbing onto the chair opposite my desk and sitting there perfectly straight. I said, ’It’s already twelve-thirty. Aren’t you going to bed?’"

"...’There’s something I want to figure out.’"

Chaisi answered in unison with his five-year-old self.

"How do I get to the Nest?" Five-year-old Chaisi stared intently at Kai Luonan and said, "You’ve been there, haven’t you? What kind of place is it? How old do I have to be to go?"

"Who told you about the ’Nest’?" Kai Luonan raised an eyebrow.

Since coming to Blackmoor City, Chaisi had had nothing to do. He sat in the apartment, replaying every word he had heard on the night of his mother’s death over and over in his mind.

He refused to think about his mother’s fear and her screams; he focused only on what the resident had said.

He looked up words in the dictionary based on their syllables, asked his aunt about fragments of conversation, and even drew inspiration from television shows.

"There’s a place in the world that most people can’t go to, called the ’Nest.’ Lots of monsters who call themselves ’residents’ live there. They usually can’t come to our world, but lots of humans can go to the Nest because humans have Paths."

He laid out his entire analysis.

"How did you know I’ve been there?"

Chaisi stuttered a little at this point, but he was full of confidence in his conclusion. "You... Anyway, I know you must have a Path. You’ve definitely been to the Nest, I just know it! That monster... a normal person couldn’t handle it, but you could."

At some point, Kai Luonan had put down his book and taken off his glasses. He propped his arms on the desk and leaned forward—even as young as Chaisi was, he knew this meant the adult was listening to him with full attention.

His mother used to listen to him just like that, whenever she wasn’t busy.

"...You deduced all this yourself?" Kai Luonan seemed to notice his confusion and changed his wording. "You figured all this out on your own? Just from that one night?"

Chaisi nodded.

"And then? What do you want to do?"

"My mom had a Path, so maybe I do too. I want to go to the Nest, find that resident, and kill it to get revenge."

"How would you kill it? With a gun?"

The question sounded almost like a test.

Chaisi scrunched up his face. "No, not with a gun... Humans can’t kill it, right?"

Kai Luonan was slightly taken aback again. "Why do you say that?"

"It... I don’t know how to say it, but it’s different from us. Its knife pierced through my body, but I’m still alive... It-it’s different."

At that time, Chaisi couldn’t yet clearly articulate the concept that "the Nest and its residents are not governed by the laws of the mortal world."

"If you can’t kill it, what’s your plan?" Kai Luonan asked slowly.

Chaisi was stunned for a few seconds.

"I’ll get other residents to kill it," he said after a moment. "What do other monsters want? I’ll go find it for them. Anything. But I won’t give it to them directly. They have to kill the resident that killed my mom first, then I’ll give it to them."

A five-year-old child naturally has the privilege of being naive. But Kai Luonan didn’t smile.

He thought he had answered incorrectly, that his answer wasn’t good enough.

"Or-or I could trick it into coming here again! Trap it... This isn’t the Nest, so it would definitely run into problems it wouldn’t have in the Nest. It’s like... this isn’t Luocheng, so I’m facing problems that only exist in Blackmoor City. It’s the same, right?"

Kai Luonan studied him quietly for a while.

"It’s twelve-thirty, much too late for a child. Go to bed."

Chaisi felt like he had been shut out.

He was suddenly anxious and angry, and couldn’t stop himself from crying silently. Wiping his tears, he tried to think of a retort for Kai Luonan.

"No, it’s twelve forty-five now. Adults should go to bed too."

Kai Luonan paused, glanced at his watch, and chuckled softly. "Are you always so sensitive to time?"

"No," he answered. "I trained myself waiting for my mom to get off work."

Chaisi stopped walking in the darkness.

He had forgotten many details of that night. But there was one detail that he hadn’t actually forgotten, just buried deep in the recesses of his mind. After dissipating into the darkness, it had been summoned back along with everything else by Uncle Kai’s narration.

"...Such an ordinary background... but the child she bore is truly not."

As he closed the door, he had faintly heard Kai Luonan mutter this to himself.